The effect of transverse shear deformation on bending of elastic symmetric laminated composite plates undergoing large deformation (in the Von Karman sense) is considered in the present paper. The non-linear terms of the lateral displacement are considered as an additional set of lateral loads acting on the plate. The solution of a Von Karman type plate is therefore reduced to that of an equivalent plate with small displacements. This method offers an alternative technique for obtaining non-linear solutions to plate problems. The solutions of a number of example problems indicate that the non-linear shear deformation theory results, as expected, in higher values of the lateral displacement than the non-linear solutions from the classical plate theory. The difference in the values of the maximum displacement from both solutions, however, remains essentially constant beyond a certain value of the load. It is also noted that the linear and non-linear solutions deviate at a low value of w/h (w = maximum lateral displacement, h = thickness). Consequently, the extent of w/h within which the small deflection theory is applicable to composite plates is much lower than the value of 0.4 typically used for isotropic plates and depends, in general, upon lamination geometry and the degree of anisotropy.
Nonlinear Donati compatibility conditions for the nonlinear Kirchhoff–von Kármán–Love plate theory
